Tesla releases detailed safety report after Waymo co-CEO called for more data

Tesla has published the most detailed look at the performance and relative safety of its advanced driver-assistance software, just a few weeks after Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana shared a TechCrunch Disrupt He called companies To release more data.

On a A new section of its websiteTesla claims that in North America, owners using the company’s full self-driving (supervised) software drive about 5 million miles before a major crash and about 1.5 million miles before a minor crash.

This is much lower than the national average based on statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This data shows that people experience a major crash every 699,000 miles, and a minor crash every 229,000 miles, at least according to Tesla’s interpretation.

Tesla has been releasing “Vehicle Safety Reports” on a quarterly basis for a while. But those reports were Frequent criticism Because it is not enough. Tesla has released almost no information about safety performance in a Robotaxi trial conducted in Austin, Texas, this year, which still has employees monitoring the driver’s seat for safety reasons.

Waymo, currently the leading robotics company in the United States based on deployed cars and customer service, has done just that published Detailed data shows that its vehicles are about 5 times safer than human drivers, and 12 times safer in relation to pedestrians. At the Disrupt conference held last month, Mawakana he asked To name other companies that you felt were making the roads safer.

“I don’t know who is on that list, because they don’t tell us what’s happening to their fleets,” Maucana said, without naming Tesla.

“I think there’s a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road, and you’re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you’re going to have someone in another room monitoring the fleet and they can seize their vehicles, then you have a duty to be transparent about what’s going on,” she said. “And if you’re not transparent, in my view you’re not doing what’s necessary to actually earn the right to make the road safer.”

Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about whether Mawakana believes Tesla’s new data is sufficient.

One frequent criticism of Tesla’s quarterly safety reports is that they focus on Autopilot, a much less advanced driver-assistance system than its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software — which, despite its name, does not make a car fully self-driving. Autopilot is designed to be used on highways, which typically have a lower rate of accidents (when minor collisions are included).

Tesla has finally broken all this data. The new section of Tesla’s website claims that drivers using FSD travel about 2.9 million miles between major collisions, while NHTSA data shows that all drivers travel about 505,000 miles per major collision. Tesla claims that FSD users drive about 986,000 miles between minor collisions, while NHTSA data shows that all drivers travel about 178,000 miles per minor collision.

Tesla is also finally showing how it defines these terms for the first time.

The automaker uses Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, specifically 49 CFR § 563.5. Tesla defines “major crashes” as crashes with high-severity impacts where the vehicle’s airbags “or other irreversible fire restraints” deploy. The company also says that if the FSD is active “at any time within five seconds prior to the crash event,” it includes that fault in this data set.

“This calculation ensures that crash rates reported for FSD (supervision) capture not only crashes that occur while the system is actively controlling the vehicle, but also scenarios where the driver may disengage the system or where the system shuts down on its own shortly before a crash,” Tesla says.

In its FAQ section, Tesla states that it will update the data quarterly and that it will “reflect a twelve-month rolling compilation of mileage and crashes in an effort to stay relevant on recent trends and progress.” The company says it will not publish other information, such as infection rates, because it collects this data automatically from vehicles.

Instead, Tesla focuses on objective and programmatic metrics like crash frequency and airbag deployment rates. “Airbag deployments serve as a reliable indicator of crash severity,” the company writes.